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I am considering getting flight tickets from Europe to Japan with Air China, and I can pretty much choose whether to transit at Beijing (PEK) or Shanghai (PVG). Are there any practical advantages of one over the other regarding transfer procecures, customs/immigration, luggage check-through, ...?

All flights would be on one ticket issued by CA, will all flights operated by CA as well.

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    Beijing should be 2h faster or so, because geography.
    – alamar
    Oct 16, 2019 at 10:01
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    That's true, there is a bit more than an hour of difference in flight time - in my case, however, the effect on overall travel time is almost completely evaporated by the longer transfer duration in PEK.
    – TheWolf
    Oct 16, 2019 at 10:39
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    This may be terminal dependent. PEK T2 is pretty sparse, but I believe T3 is the second largest terminal in the world. I transferred through T2 last year and we had to go find people to man the transfer points, but there was absolutely no crowd in the terminal at all (but also very few services if you don't have lounge access).
    – ex-user3761894
    Oct 16, 2019 at 18:26

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PEK is working overload this year, meaning there is a lot of congestion at PEK. Assuming that the prices are similar, I would choose PVG as the lines are much shorter. If flying into PKX (Beijing Daxing International Airport) is an option, then PKX would be the best option as you would have less walking to do between transfers and since it is newer, you get fast WiFi and good modern technology. It has very short lines and the flights from LHR to PKX to Japan are shorter than those at PVG.

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